That being said, JavaScript continues to evolve in more ways than one. On one hand, it seems that everywhere you look, there is yet another cool JavaScript library (YACJL). And on the other hand, (perhaps the more important hand) JavaScript as a language continues to add new features. So, contrary to what some people might think, JavaScript wasn't developed 18 years ago and left to the "assembly language of the web gnomes".

In fact, ECMAScript (the formal JavaScript language standard) is standardized by Ecma International. The same organization that is responsible for the C# standard. They are working on ECMAScript 6, codenamed "Harmony", with a target date of December 2013.

All that being said, you're probably asking yourself "what about the browsers?" Well, that's a very poignant question. Each official release of ECMAScript is only as good as the browser adoption. Depending on the browser, it may takes months or even years [insert sad face here] for some of the features to be available for use. In either case, thankfully there are browser compatibility charts that you can track JavaScript feature progress.

Finally, if you're looking to play around with these right this minute, Firefox tries to stay ahead of the curve. Be forewarned, however, as these are implementations of features for a specification that has not be finalized.